> Very telling points about LaTeX - that like XML/HTML
No, it's a demonstration of ignorance. LaTeX wasn't written by Lispers, it is merely used by them. The fact that they find its design decisions acceptable must be weighed against the cost of their alternatives. That doesn't imply that they wouldn't have been happier with a more lispish syntax.
At the time that those decisions were made, LaTeX was pretty much the best alternative. The fact that Lispers, like almost everyone else in related communities, made that decision merely says that Lispers don't cut off their noses to spite their face.
The article suggests Lispers could have used sexp as a front-end to LaTeX, in the same way that XML was used as a front-end to LaTeX. Very easy to do.
> If S-expressions were easier to edit, it would be most logical to edit the document in S-expressions and then write a small Scheme program to convert S-expressions into a formatting language like LaTeX. This is, what XML and SGML people have done for decades [...]
> The article suggests Lispers could have used sexp as a front-end to LaTeX
(1) As another comment points out, they have when doing so provided benefits.
(2) Lispers tend to be multi-lingual; they'll use other languages when appropriate. If XMLers can only work in XML....
>This is, what XML and SGML people have done for decades
Decades? 20 years/two decades ago is 1988. The first draft of XML is roughly 1998/10 years later/one decade ago. GML, a predecessor to SGML, didn't become public until 73 but the "multiple use" stuff was still in the future.
SGML rode the WWW wave, but that didn't happen for technical reasons.
Note that such front-ends are inherently leaky. If all they do is transform syntax, they're probably a bad idea.
Note that the point of using s-expressions as a front-end would be programmatic generation, not by-human editing. (Neither sexpressions nor xml is actually all that friendly for editing text.)
Do XML folks really think write front-ends for ease of editing?
No, it's a demonstration of ignorance. LaTeX wasn't written by Lispers, it is merely used by them. The fact that they find its design decisions acceptable must be weighed against the cost of their alternatives. That doesn't imply that they wouldn't have been happier with a more lispish syntax.
At the time that those decisions were made, LaTeX was pretty much the best alternative. The fact that Lispers, like almost everyone else in related communities, made that decision merely says that Lispers don't cut off their noses to spite their face.